Help! My music is in prison!

[icehorse]

I know this isn't really a "tech support" forum, but I figured, what the heck...

Recently my faithful old iPod died

Luckily (or so I thought), I have a backup of my music. So I have a very old, but working perfectly MacBook Pro, and I bought a new-ish, refurbed iPod, 6th generation. Now the problem is that my old MacBook can't talk to my newish iPod. So I have all my music, and I can't figure out how to get it on my iPod.

I tried dropbox, but my iPod is one generation old, sigh...

This planned obsolescence stuff is irritating.

 

[SalixIncendium]

If you were signed in with Apple ID, your music may have been backed up to iCloud. Have you tried signing into that with the new iPod?

 

[ChristineM]

Ive used Google drive to transfer between non talking PCs

 

[Twilight Hue]

You need a drink.

 

[exchemist]

I know this isn't really a "tech support" forum, but I figured, what the heck...

Recently my faithful old iPod died

Luckily (or so I thought), I have a backup of my music. So I have a very old, but working perfectly MacBook Pro, and I bought a new-ish, refurbed iPod, 6th generation. Now the problem is that my old MacBook can't talk to my newish iPod. So I have all my music, and I can't figure out how to get it on my iPod.

I tried dropbox, but my iPod is one generation old, sigh...

This planned obsolescence stuff is irritating.

I gave up with iTunes several years ago. I find it completely unintuitive and annoying. It's weird, because every other Apple product seems to be easy to understand and use. I suspect the reason is because iTunes has been twisted into a tool to make you buy content from Apple, rather than being a product to handle music files, as it was originally.

I too have lots of music files uploaded from CD on my old Mac, which I used to transfer to my iPod, for learning pieces I was going to sing. But I've given up. Now I just find performances on YouTube and sing along to those. It's not as good, since it's not portable, you can't go forward and back so easily, and you get interrupted by silly ads for anything from fast food to funeral planning. But the music itself is free and you can often choose from different performances, which can help when you want a slower tempo, or to find one in Baroque pitch to make the high notes easier, etc.

 

[Augustus]

So I have a very old, but working perfectly MacBook Pro, and I bought a new-ish, refurbed iPod, 6th generation. Now the problem is that my old MacBook can't talk to my newish iPod. So I have all my music, and I can't figure out how to get it on my iPod.

Have you updated the OS on your macbook and then updated itunes?

 

[Brickjectivity]

I know this isn't really a "tech support" forum, but I figured, what the heck...

Recently my faithful old iPod died

Luckily (or so I thought), I have a backup of my music. So I have a very old, but working perfectly MacBook Pro, and I bought a new-ish, refurbed iPod, 6th generation. Now the problem is that my old MacBook can't talk to my newish iPod. So I have all my music, and I can't figure out how to get it on my iPod.

I tried dropbox, but my iPod is one generation old, sigh...

This planned obsolescence stuff is irritating.

Try using these two searches "How to export music from itunes," and "Where are the songs on my mac?" I'm not sure precisely what you're looking for, but something useful will come up. I wish I could be more useful, but I am unfamiliar with current mac models. I lost track at OS 9. I do know something about sound files though.

You probably should find out if your music is encrypted and only playable under Digital Rights Management (DRM) conditions. You may be able to convert each song file into some other format that isn't locked down. This probably is irrelevant to you, right now. I don't know if it interests you. My music is in the .flac format currently. I don't know if itunes will play .flac files, but my cheap DVD player will. I'll always be able to take my music files anywhere and not need a password to play them. If my player won't do .flac I can convert them to mp3's or wma's or any other song file format. If I get a mac I can probably find a way to play them on the mac, too.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

iTunes was one of the first reasons I moved out of the Apple infosphere.
It seemed deliberately set up to prevent people leaving. So I left before I became too invested.

Now I just have a Spotify Premium account, and everything is much simpler.

Sorry, can't help with the OP, but this happened with my wife some years back and there was a cloud backup, so I'm hoping for you.

 

[icehorse]

thanks for all these ideas. i've been in an apple support "chat" for a couple of hours now! (I think they're seeing that I just bought my wife a new MBP, so they're being generous).

Believe it or not, the problem might have been a partially working cable! The mac was able to see the ipod, but itunes wasn't. i got another cable and now it looks like it's going to work!!!

I like spotify a youtube and such. but when possible, i'd prefer to use my ipod so that i'm not burning energy in a server farm somewhere.

 

[icehorse]

i would never have guessed that a cable could be "partially" working. I kind of thought a cable either worked or it didn't